NASA Mars Space Mission 2018: New Details With Cheaper Budget

A large NASA rover will land on Mars in about a week from today but that did not make NASA’s Doug McCuistion contented. He wants to make another mission at a lesser expense and plans to send it through space by 2018 or 2020. For the mission, NASA foresees a budget expense of about $800 million which is quite a nice surprise for the suffering economy compared to the budget of the previous mission which was $2.5 billion. NASA also cut back some of its Mars exploratory plans for 2016 and 2018 because of President Obama’s budget cuts.

With budget like this, the new Mars Mission would be similar to “Discovery Missions which are characterized by simple systems”, according to McCuistion. It is said to utilize inflatable decelerators called ballutes and atomic clocks. Said devices will help the reduce speed and accurately land on the planet. The new rover will also use 98-foot-wide parachutes instead of the familiar 69-feet ones which are currently being used by all the previous rovers.

As of the moment, there is no decision yet as to whether the mission will be done by a rover, a lander or an orbiter because they have yet to wait for results from a Martian sample-return mission and a human flight to Mars. If ever NASA decides to use an orbiter, sources said that new laser communications systems will be used.